Emulation as an alternative preservation strategy – use-cases, tools and lessons learned

Abstract

Emulation has evolved into a mature digital preservation strategy providing, inter alia, functional access to a wide range of digital objects using their original creation environments. In contrast to format migration strategies a functional, emulationbased approach requires a number of additional components. These can be provided by Emulation-as-a-Service, implemented and developed as a distributed framework for various emulation-based services and technologies for long-term preservation and access. This paper presents three distinct applications of the emulation-strategy to preserve complex scientific processing systems, to render complex interactive and dynamic digital objects, and to implement a universal migration-workflows utilizing the original environments in which objects were created.